Review: One of the reasons I started this blog was because I was fed up of having my time wasted by turning up at awful gyms or places which had shut down or been mislabeled on google maps. There is no worse feeling the being stood outside a boarded up shop, with pre-workout coursing violently through your veins, and a wild shrew waiting for you at home. The day I found Chey Mongkol Sports Club was one of such day. I initially headed off to find the Dam Bong Deak Gym, however when I got to the spot marked as the location on Google Maps, I couldn’t find anything that looked like a gym. Maybe it was closed, or maybe it never existed. Who can be sure? Perhaps it was inside of all of us the whole time? Christ, I hardly care, so I have no idea the level of apathy you, as the dear reader, must currently have to this whole topic.

Anywho. Having gone back to google maps and googled “gyms in Phnom Penh” I managed to locate the Chey Mongkol Sports Club. The sports club appears to be attached to a hotel and it set back from the road and round to the left. You need to seemingly walk into the car park of the hotel to find the gym, which is in a steel cage on the far left. Faded banners, which were just about readable in the faint glow of the Bangkok street lights, announce the presence of a gym at this location.Having walked in and had a fairly confusing sign language conversation with the Cambodian man behind the desk, I walked in delighted to have found a gym to train in. This joy was somewhat short-lived as the grumpy man behind the counter told me off for making too much noise whilst on the final lifts of my triangle deadlift set. Asshole.

This gym has:

Dumbbells up to 110 lbs

Adjustable benches

Olympic bat

Flay barbell bench

Incline barbell bench

Decline barbell bench

Barbell shoulder press bench

Assisted dips / pull up machine

Smith machine

Squat rack

Cables

Lat pull down

Leg press

Leg extension

Leg curl

Easy bar

Preacher curl bench

Hammer curl bar

Lower back raise bench

Seated low row

Cross trainer

Treadmill

Entrance to this gym on a day pass is 2500 riel. (approx 0.60p). It costs an extra 1500 riel to use the cardio equipment if you are so inclined. The gym also sells water and other drinks as well as BCAAs, pre-workout, Creatine and Protein and weight gainer. These are between $32 to $40 each.

Who is this gym for? Whilst I was here on a Sunday night, there was a mix of a couple of female tourists and a few locals. The gym is pretty secluded, but open enough not to be a cause for concern. The dumbbells do go high enough for any workout and the presence of olympic bars and a squat rack mean that you should be able to train all of the major compound lifts.

Tips: Don’t be the last one in there because the guy behind the counter is even more of an asshole trying to get you to leave before closing time. However, if you need to workout late on a Sunday, this gym is open late and is cheap enough to make it a viable option, asshole notwithstanding.